“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.”

- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

It’s been 230 years since James Madison drafted the Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments to the Constitution - as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, and what do we have to show for it?

Nothing good.

In America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

We can pretend that the Constitution, which was written to hold the government accountable, is still our governing document, but the reality of life in the American police state tells a different story.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Particularly at least during the last 20 years, the Constitution and Bill of Rights have been vivisected, and have been condemned to die an horrendous death, courtesy of those "Acquisitions" of major corporations, hysterically still referred to as our "Congressional Representatives."

This is why, when legislation is drafted, it invariably protects the corporate interests which have "purchased" that legislation into being, in broad daylight, through the furtive actions of these alleged "Congressional Representatives", who do understand that what they are doing is terrific for the corporations which own them, but generally lousy for We the People.

As Saxo Bank's Peter Garnry recaps yesterday's Apple event, the company introduced its iPhone 11 which now comes in three different versions with cheapest version selling for $699 which a price cut aimed to lure smartphone buyers back into Apple’s realm (at the expense of a drop in Apple's ASP). The stock market reacted positively to the news, but criticism has surfaced that Apple is falling behind as the new iPhone 11 is not coming with a 5G integration which makes almost impossible for Apple to have growth in China where local smartphone makers such as Huawei is introducing smartphone with 5G integration. Beginning in the second half of 2020 this will be a constraint for Apple.

Why does 5G matter?

To answer that question, we have excerpted from a recent Deutsche Bank report explaining "how 5G will change your life."

August gun sales were up 15% thanks to Democrats’ totalitarian demands for mandatory buybacks. Those who bought guns were Americans seeking self-protection and with deep concerns that President Donald Trump is on board with gun control.

According to the Washington Examiner, the overall number of background checks recorded in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System surged 15.5%. Those numbers were courtesy of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). That figure includes background checks done for security, concealed carry permits, and gun sales and was the highest August number ever recorded.

Adjusted for sales, the NSSF industry group said that August FBI background checks for sales surged 15.2% over August 2018. The adjusted August number was second only to August 2016 during the heated presidential election. It’s become evident that gun control authoritarians are the best gun salespeople on the planet.

Webmaster's Commentary:

And isn't it painfully ironic, that so many shootings in this country happen in "gun free" zones, where the good people, armed, trained, and responsible gun owners, who could potentially stop a massacre, are forbidden to do just that?!?

A new report from Vote Hemp, a top hemp advocacy group, indicates the amount of licensed acreage of hemp farming across the US has more than quadrupled this year.

The report, 2019 US Hemp License Report, says the number of acres of hemp licensed across 34 states totaled 511,442 in 2019, a 455% jump YoY. State licenses to produce hemp were issued to 16,877 farmers and researchers, a 476% YoY jump.

Today the event that defined the United States’ foreign policy in the 21st century, and heralded the destruction of whole countries, turns 18. The events of September 11, 2001 remains etched into the memories of Americans and many others, as a collective tragedy that brought Americans together and brought as well a general resolve among them that those responsible be brought to justice.

While the events of that day did unite Americans in these ways for a time, the different trajectories of the official relative to the independent investigations into the September 11 attacks have often led to division in the years since 2001, with vicious attacks or outright dismissal being levied against the latter.

Webmaster's Commentary:

We do not need new investigations; we know precisely what happened on 9/11, and who the real criminals and tyrants were, to bring about this horrific spectacle of death and destruction into being.

This event allowed the US to slide ever further into a dictatorship from which it may never recover, and was manipulated by unscrupulous US politicians and elements of overseas countries, who wanted to see this happen, as a premise for war against both Afghanistan and Iraq.

And unless and until those truly responsible for this heinous crime are charged, tried, and convicted for their crimes against both humanity, and the true democratic republic of the United States of America, there will never be closure here.

But do not hold your breath; the monied, particularly those career criminals ensconced in the higher echelons of the US Deep State and Military Industrial Complex, rarely eat their own.

Modern day feminist have found a couple new reasons to be offended and outraged, from Apple's reprogramming their virtual assistant, Siri's, responses in relation to the word "feminism or feminist," to how men sit in airplanes, supposedly eating up a raging liberal feminist's "space, to the term "hey guys" suddenly being inappropriate terminology.

We also see that a traditional feminist Democrat scholar, who has spent decades speaking and lecturing at schools, so offends college "snowflakes" that they needed a safe space and a therapy dog, just to deal with her opinions on modern day feminism.

The left has the luxury of having lost the argument on crime for the past few decades and, as a consequence, the electorate has no recollection of the living nightmare produced by Great Liberal Ideas About Crime.

Brooklyn hipsters blithely go about their business, completely unaware that their trendy neighborhoods were war zones in the 1970s, 1980s — and well into the 1990s. Walking those streets meant you were taking your life into your hands.

Thanks to Republicans’ aggressive law-and-order policies, today, most U.S. cities are astonishingly safe. Crime is at its lowest level in decades. Life is possible again!

The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a big win Wednesday afternoon, after two injunctions against asylum restrictions were struck down. The ruling means that US Customs and Border Protection can immediately begin denying migrants asylum at the southern border if they haven’t first applied for safe haven in a “third country” while the greater legal battle over the issue plays out in the lower courts.

The creation of a UN "Commissioner for Protecting our European Way of Life" has sparked outrage across Europe, after the new role which will oversee immigration policy was announced by incoming EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

The new position, to be filled by Greece's EU commissioner, Margaritis Schinas, was unveiled along with the rest of von der Leyen's new cabinet at a Tuesday press conference in Brussels.

While Von der Leyen said the new Commission cabinet was "as diverse as Europe is," critics have noted that all of its members are white, while calling the new commissioner position "fascist," according to The Independent - which couldn't find a single person in support of the new role for a quote.

"This looks like the portfolio to fight back against the rise of the fascists, but only by adopting their divisive rhetoric around ‘strong borders’," British Green MEP Molly Scott Cato told The Independent.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I'm terribly sorry, but the 21st century people displaced in the Middle East, have been displaced by wars, coupled with a searing lack of economic opportunities in their own countries.

The first intelligent thing to do is stop all the wars of conquest in which the US government is utterly, and painfully, complicit. If people feel they can thrive at home, and do not feel that they, or their families are threatened, they will most likely stay in their home countries.

Why is the concept of "diversity and personal excellence" so hard for the EU to grasp?!? Why have they not developed a "merit system", as Australia has adopted, which would insure that Europe gets "the best of the best", coupled those new citizens having a genuine desire to embrace their adoptive country's laws and cultural norms?!?

Folks, this isn't rocket science; this is how you build countries, and vet immigrants in the 21st century, period, end of discussion.

The US has once again surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia to reclaim the No. 1 spot as the world's largest oil exporter, according to data from the International Energy Agency.

Record shale production helped the US ship nearly 9 million barrels of crude and other oil products a day in June, surpassing Saudi Arabia, Bloomberg reports. And as more companies build the infrastructure necessary to transport oil from fields in Texas and New Mexico to the coast, the amount of oil exported by the US is expected to climb.

The increase in US crude exports in June was helped by a surge in crude-oil shipments to more than 3 million barrels a day, according to the IEA report. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia was cutting exports in line with the OPEC+ agreement on production cuts, while Russia's output was hampered by the Druzhba pipeline crisis.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Because I didn't know about the aforementioned Russian oil crisis, I researched it, and this is what I found:

'Since April 20th nearly 5 million tons of Russian crude bound for Europe has been stuck in westbound pipelines. The flow of oil is suspended due to high levels of contamination by organochloride, a chemical used to facilitate the extraction of heavy oil. The organic chloride contaminant – which wreaks havoc on refining equipment if not properly treated – allegedly originated from a privately owned refinery called Nikolayeva in Russia’s Samara Region along the Volga river.

The contaminated oil was being shipped via the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline which boasts an impressive 1 million barrels per day capacity, or 1% of total global crude demand.'

Was this an horrific accident... or deliberate industrial sabotage?!? We may never be privy to the whole story here, but that being said, these are the kinds of "chained events" which can wreak catastrophe on a country's economy.

Will outgoing ECB president Mario Draghi's "swan song" decision - the one in which he is widely expected to cut rates deeper into negative territory and resume sovereign and/or corporate QE - be a bazooka or a waster pistol? That's the question.

Markets currently fully price in a 10 bps reduction in the deposit rate to -0.5% with just over a 40% chance of a deeper cut of 20 bps.

Of the 70 economists polled by Reuters, around a quarter look for a 20bps reduction with the remainder looking for 10bps. Elsewhere, the survey noted that almost 90% of respondents expected a resumption of bond purchases as of October with a touted monthly amount of EUR 30bln”. In order to mitigate the impact of deeper negative rates on the Eurozone banking sector, around 90% of those surveyed look for some form of tiering system.

Last night, we reported that President Trump had decided to delay a 5% increase in tariffs on Chinese goods by two weeks, supposedly out of respect for Beijing and its celebration of 70 years of Communist Party rule on Oct. 1. Trump's decision came less than a day after China waived 25% tariffs on 16 types of US goods to try and "sweeten" the deal ahead of trade talks next month.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Fingers crossed here, but I will not hold my breath here, until I see some concrete movement on both sides.

When the United States Congress finally caved to pressures from temperance groups and passed the 18th Amendment in 1920, the country went dry. Alcohol production, sales, and distribution was suddenly a federal offense. The law that was intended to turn hard-drinking, money-squandering men into suitable husbands and providers, did little to curb the appeal of alcohol. Far from forcing people to go sober, the amendment prohibiting alcohol, called Prohibition, only led people to seek out creative and illegal ways of getting their booze. In the spirit of true American entrepreneurialism, many individuals set out to make their fortune from Prohibition by becoming rum runners.

The Siberian taiga is the largest of Earth’s nearly uninhabited wilderness and it is one of the most isolated places in the world. It is also one of the most difficult terrains to travel through and it’s nearly impossible to live there. The short summers and long winters of very cold weather discourage human habitation.

Long before the historic presidency of Barack Obama, one man cut himself off a little slice of that history by becoming the first African-American candidate in a major party's presidential primary election. To give you just a small idea of how gutsy he was, he did this in the middle of the turbulent Civil Rights era. It was a groundbreaking achievement and a huge step in the quest for racial equality, yet you probably don't know this man's name. History has relegated him to the footnotes of the history books, but his contributions cannot be ignored. He is Frank R. Beckwith, and this is his story.

A federal court in North Dakota has blocked a controversial anti-abortion law from taking effect. The law required physicians to counsel patients that an abortion performed via medication could be reversed if they changed their mind during the procedure.

Albert Bigler has been a licensed driver for at least 65 of his 95 years in the state of Texas. But unless he can produce a birth certificate, the Department of Public Safety has told him he can't renew that license.

An immigration judge reportedly threatened a Guatemalan child who was making some noise that a “very big dog” would “come out and bite you” if the undocumented immigrant did not quiet down, according to a report by Mother Jones.

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE
New York area fire commissioners have called for a new investigation into 9/11, claiming that "overwhelming evidence" of "pre-planted explosives...caused the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings." The Franklin Square and Munson Fire District outside of Queens, New York made history by becoming the first legislative body in the country to support a new investigation into the events of 9/11, according to Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

The resolution, read aloud and passed during a July 24, 2019 meeting and calling for the investigation was drafted by Commissioner Christopher Gioia and was unanimously approved by the five commissioners.

SOURCE: PAULCRAIGROBERTS.ORG
There is no one to support your website but you

9/11 After 18 Years

Paul Craig Roberts

I would appreciate hearing from readers whether they have come across a report in the print, TV, or NPR media of the highly professional four-year investigation of WTC Building 7’s demise. The international team of civil engineers concluded that the official story of Building 7’s destruction is entirely false. I reported their findings here: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/09/04/the-official-story-of-the-...

On the basis of the known evidence, knowledgeable and informed people have concluded that 9/11 was an inside job organized by Vice President Dick Cheney, his stable of neoconservatives, and Israel for the purpose of reconstructing the Middle East in Israel’s interest and enriching the US military/security complex in the process.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I hear you, Paul; the 9/11 report was simply a piece of politically concocted codswallop, which all Americans and the world were compelled to swallow whole.

I, for one, didn't swallow; therefore, the possibility that I can ever trust the Federal government with anything.... is dim to the point of non-existent.

In a segment of the American Pastors Network’s “Stand in the Gap” podcast published last week, hosts Gary Dull and Dave Kistler, without naming names, slammed “conservative Christian leaders” who “criticize the president incessantly.”

Boris Johnson has secretly ordered the Cabinet Office to turn the government’s public internet service into a platform for “targeted and personalised information” to be gathered in the run-up to Brexit, BuzzFeed News has learned.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a blistering response to the Trump Administration’s recent claim that private companies can lawfully fire individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Suppose you are an American. And suppose you spent the last 60 years laying in quiet repose in a freezer chest after expertly injecting yourself with enough glycerine to keep ice crystals from disrupting your cellular membranes. Lord only knows why the heck you did that, but that’s all past tense now. Anyhow, now it’s 2019 and for some other unfathomable reason your great-grandchildren dig you out of the freezer chest, defrost you, zap you a few times with a cattle prod to get your heart pumping, walk you around for a bit while feeding you strong black coffee and here you are again, good as new and ready for action.